Separated at Birth: Jet Maximization, Axis Minimization, and Stable Cone Finding

Jet finding is a type of optimization problem, where hadrons from a high-energy collision event are grouped into jets based on a clustering criterion. As three interesting examples, one can form a jet cluster that (1) optimizes the overall jet four-vector, (2) optimizes the jet axis, or (3) aligns the jet axis with the jet four-vector. In this paper, we show that these three approaches to jet finding, despite being philosophically quite different, can be regarded as descendants of a mother optimization problem. For the special case of finding a single cone jet of fixed opening angle, the three approaches are genuinely identical when defined appropriately, and the result is a stable cone jet with the largest value of a quantity J. This relationship is only approximate for cone jets in the rapidity-azimuth plane, as used at the Large Hadron Collider, though the differences are mild for small radius jets.Comment: 7 pages, 2 tables; v2: references added; v3: small clarifications and table 2 added to match journal versio

Searching for an invisible A' vector boson with DarkLight

High-luminosity experiments are able to search for new physics at low energies, which could have evaded detection thus far due to very weak couplings to the Standard Model. The DarkLight experiment at Jefferson Lab is designed to search for a new U(1) vector boson A' in the mass range 10-100 MeV through its decay A' -> e+ e-. In this paper, we demonstrate that DarkLight is also sensitive to an A' decaying to invisible final states. We analyze the DarkLight reach for invisible A' bosons assuming a nominal two month running time, including the possibility of augmenting the DarkLight design to include photon detection. We also propose two new analysis techniques that might prove useful for other high-luminosity searches: a cut on missing energy to improve the invariant mass resolution, and a cut on the sign of the missing invariant mass-squared to mitigate pileup. We compare the DarkLight reach to existing experimental proposals, including a complementary search using the VEPP-3 positron beam.Comment: 18 pages, 22 figures, 4 tables; v2: references and clarifications added; v3: version published in PRD, discussion of constraints from rare kaon decays adde

Resolving Boosted Jets with XCone

We show how the recently proposed XCone jet algorithm smoothly interpolates between resolved and boosted kinematics. When using standard jet algorithms to reconstruct the decays of hadronic resonances like top quarks and Higgs bosons, one typically needs separate analysis strategies to handle the resolved regime of well-separated jets and the boosted regime of fat jets with substructure. XCone, by contrast, is an exclusive cone jet algorithm that always returns a fixed number of jets, so jet regions remain resolved even when (sub)jets are overlapping in the boosted regime. In this paper, we perform three LHC case studies---dijet resonances, Higgs decays to bottom quarks, and all-hadronic top pairs---that demonstrate the physics applications of XCone over a wide kinematic range.Comment: 36 pages, 25 figures, 1 table; v2: references added; v3: discussion added and new appendix B to match JHEP versio

Aspects of Jets at 100 TeV

We present three case studies at a 100 TeV proton collider for how jet analyses can be improved using new jet (sub)structure techniques. First, we use the winner-take-all recombination scheme to define a recoil-free jet axis that is robust against pileup. Second, we show that soft drop declustering is an effective jet grooming procedure that respects the approximate scale invariance of QCD. Finally, we highlight a potential standard candle for jet calibration using the soft-dropped energy loss. This latter observable is remarkably insensitive to the scale and flavor of the jet, a feature that arises because it is infrared/collinear unsafe, but Sudakov safe.Comment: 9 pages, double column, 7 figures, based on a talk by A.L. at the "Workshop on Physics at a 100 TeV Collider" at SLAC from April 23-25, 2014; v.2: PRD versio

Aspects of Track-Assisted Mass

Track-assisted mass is a proxy for jet mass that only uses direction information from charged particles, allowing it to be measured at the Large Hadron Collider with very fine angular resolution. In this paper, we introduce a generalization of track-assisted mass and analyze its performance in both parton shower generators and resummed calculations. For the original track-assisted mass, the track-only mass is rescaled by the charged energy fraction of the jet. In our generalization, the rescaling factor includes both per-jet and ensemble-averaged information, facilitating a closer correspondence to ordinary jet mass. Using the track function formalism in electron-positron collisions, we calculate the spectrum of generalized track-assisted mass to next-to-leading-logarithmic order with leading-order matching. These resummed calculations provide theoretical insight into the close correspondence between track-assisted mass and ordinary jet mass. With the growing importance of jet grooming algorithms, we also calculate track-assisted mass on soft-drop groomed jets.Comment: 35+17 pages, 22 figures; v3: improvements to calculation and presentation to appear in JHE

Unsafe but Calculable: Ratios of Angularities in Perturbative QCD

Infrared- and collinear-safe (IRC-safe) observables have finite cross sections to each fixed-order in perturbative QCD. Generically, ratios of IRC-safe observables are themselves not IRC safe and do not have a valid fixed-order expansion. Nevertheless, in this paper we present an explicit method to calculate the cross section for a ratio observable in perturbative QCD with the help of resummation. We take the IRC-safe jet angularities as an example and consider the ratio formed from two angularities with different angular exponents. While the ratio observable is not IRC safe, it is "Sudakov safe", meaning that the perturbative Sudakov factor exponentially suppresses the singular region of phase space. At leading logarithmic (LL) order, the distribution is finite but has a peculiar expansion in the square root of the strong coupling constant, a consequence of IRC unsafety. The accuracy of the LL distribution can be further improved with higher-order resummation and fixed-order matching. Non-perturbative effects can sometimes give rise to order one changes in the distribution, but at sufficiently high energies Q, Sudakov safety leads to non-perturbative corrections that scale like a (fractional) power of 1/Q, as is familiar for IRC-safe observables. We demonstrate that Monte Carlo parton showers give reliable predictions for the ratio observable, and we discuss the prospects for computing other ratio observables using our method.Comment: 41 pages, 14 figures, 1 table, small changes in v.

On the Topic of Jets: Disentangling Quarks and Gluons at Colliders

We introduce jet topics: a framework to identify underlying classes of jets from collider data. Because of a close mathematical relationship between distributions of observables in jets and emergent themes in sets of documents, we can apply recent techniques in "topic modeling" to extract jet topics from data with minimal or no input from simulation or theory. As a proof of concept with parton shower samples, we apply jet topics to determine separate quark and gluon jet distributions for constituent multiplicity. We also determine separate quark and gluon rapidity spectra from a mixed Z-plus-jet sample. While jet topics are defined directly from hadron-level multi-differential cross sections, one can also predict jet topics from first-principles theoretical calculations, with potential implications for how to define quark and gluon jets beyond leading-logarithmic accuracy. These investigations suggest that jet topics will be useful for extracting underlying jet distributions and fractions in a wide range of contexts at the Large Hadron Collider.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. v2: Improved discussion to match PRL versio

Resurrecting the Dead Cone

The dead cone is a well-known effect in gauge theories, where radiation from a charged particle of mass m and energy E is suppressed within an angular size of m/E. This effect is universal as it does not depend on the spin of the particle nor on the nature of the gauge interaction. It is challenging to directly measure the dead cone at colliders, however, since the region of suppressed radiation either is too small to be resolved or is filled by the decay products of the massive particle. In this paper, we propose to use jet substructure techniques to expose the dead cone effect in the strong-force radiation pattern around boosted top quarks at the Large Hadron Collider. Our study shows that with 300/fb of 13-14 TeV collision data, ATLAS and CMS could obtain the first direct evidence of the dead cone effect and test its basic features.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures; v2: references added; v3: approximate version to appear in PR

Dark Matter, Shared Asymmetries, and Galactic Gamma Ray Signals

We introduce a novel dark matter scenario where the visible sector and the dark sector share a common asymmetry. The two sectors are connected through an unstable mediator with baryon number one, allowing the standard model baryon asymmetry to be shared with dark matter via semi-annihilation. The present-day abundance of dark matter is then set by thermal freeze-out of this semi-annihilation process, yielding an asymmetric version of the WIMP miracle as well as promising signals for indirect detection experiments. As a proof of concept, we find a viable region of parameter space consistent with the observed Fermi excess of GeV gamma rays from the galactic center.Comment: 20+12 pages, 11 figures, 1 table; v2: references added, minor corrections to CMB bounds; v3: footnotes added for clarification, updated appendix A, conclusions unchanged, version to appear in JCA

Jet Observables Without Jet Algorithms

We introduce a new class of event shapes to characterize the jet-like structure of an event. Like traditional event shapes, our observables are infrared/collinear safe and involve a sum over all hadrons in an event, but like a jet clustering algorithm, they incorporate a jet radius parameter and a transverse momentum cut. Three of the ubiquitous jet-based observables---jet multiplicity, summed scalar transverse momentum, and missing transverse momentum---have event shape counterparts that are closely correlated with their jet-based cousins. Due to their "local" computational structure, these jet-like event shapes could potentially be used for trigger-level event selection at the LHC. Intriguingly, the jet multiplicity event shape typically takes on non-integer values, highlighting the inherent ambiguity in defining jets. By inverting jet multiplicity, we show how to characterize the transverse momentum of the n-th hardest jet without actually finding the constituents of that jet. Since many physics applications do require knowledge about the jet constituents, we also build a hybrid event shape that incorporates (local) jet clustering information. As a straightforward application of our general technique, we derive an event-shape version of jet trimming, allowing event-wide jet grooming without explicit jet identification. Finally, we briefly mention possible applications of our method for jet substructure studies.Comment: v2 - 31 pages, 18 figures; update to JHEP version, section 3.2 expanded, reference to FastJet contrib updated, results unchange